Guggenheim, a pioneer in the area of target date fixed income products, has responded to strong interest in its BulletShares product lineup with the launch of three more products targeting investment grade corporate debt maturing in a specific year. The recent addition, which took effect last week, extends the existing product lineup by three years, potentially appealing to investors looking to plan for liabilities six to eight years down the road. The new ETFs are:

Each of the new ETFs will hold a portfolio of corporate bonds that is scheduled to reach maturity in the indicated year. As that date approaches, the portfolio will transition to cash as the bonds mature. Instead of reinvesting the proceeds, the BulletShares ETFs will make a distribution to shareholders and then essentially shut down. [click to continue…]

As the lineup of exchange-traded products has expanded dramatically in recent years, financial advisors have found themselves with more tools at their disposal than ever before. The extreme granularity of many of the equity products out there allows for cheap, low maintenance targeting of specific corners of the investable universe, while the development of some increasingly complex products has opened up strategies that were previously inaccessible.

But perhaps the most impressive innovation in recent years has come on the bond side of the market, where the arsenal has expanded considerably over the past two years. Whatever your objective for the fixed income side of client portfolios, odds are there is an ETF that can be used to help you out. Below, we highlight ten common objectives when it comes to managing a bond portfolio–as well as the ETFs that can be used to achieve those goals [for more ETF insights, sign up for the free ETFdb newsletter]: [click to continue…]

Accretive Asset Management LLC announced last week the launch of a family of high yield bond indexes that could soon be the basis for a new suite of exchange-traded funds. The BulletShares USD High Yield Corporate Bond Indices are maturity-targeted benchmarks that measure the performance of U.S. dollar denominated non-investment grade bonds. Each index includes […]

As investors have become more comfortable with the idea of achieving fixed income exposure through the exchange-traded structure, bond ETF assets have skyrocketed and the number of funds has increased rapidly. For those in higher tax brackets, municipal bonds have always been a popular option, as the tax-exempt feature of the interest payment boosts the […]

Municipal bonds are popular among investors in the highest tax brackets because unlike corporate bonds, the interest payments received are exempt from federal (and sometimes state) taxes. Moreover, because the issuers of such bonds are generally entities with the authority to levy taxes to make good on their debt payments, the level of perceived risk […]

Fixed income ETFs have been one of the hottest growth areas in a rapidly-expanding industry. According to the ETF screener, there are now more than 100 bond ETFs available to U.S. investors, a significant increase from just one year ago. At the end of February, bond ETF assets totaled about $107 billion, an increase of […]

San Francisco-based iShares, which was acquired by BlackRock from Barclays last year, has more than 180 U.S.-listed ETFs. But the distribution of assets is far from even across these funds. At the end of 2009, the ten largest iShares ETFs–only about five percent of the issuer’s product line–accounted for 50% of total assets. So there’s […]

Following a tremendously successful 2009 that saw more than $40 billion flow into fixed income ETFs, the number of bond ETFs is expected to increase significantly in 2010. In what could be the first of many new product launches, iShares introduced a line of new municipal bond, or “muni,” ETFs on Friday. Unlike existing muni […]